Does anyone know how I object to a neighbourhood plan? It's currently a work in progress so I guess I have to wait until it is published, what's the process and how do I make sure I know when it is published?

Thanks

For background: I have a largish verge in front of my house. It's in front of me and next door and between us and the road way. It's roughly D shaped, approximately 40m long and 8m to 14m in width. So large but not a football pitch. The Parish Council is very possessive of the verge but they don't own it so it's highway's verge. They say they want to include it as green space in the neighbourhood plan. As I'm surrounded on the other 3 sides by private land then this verge is my access to my current services, drains, water, elec, gas, phone and also the route for any new services in the future, cable, fibre (I wish). I'm therefore strongly against it being anything else than a highway's verge to which utilities all have automatic access for routing their pipe and cables. My vehicle access is via RoW so I can't route services that way.

I agree with Mac although if the NP hasn’t got to the first 6 week consultation period the best bet would be to talk to the committee running it. Although the Parish Council have to oversee the process, it is ultimately organised by the voters of the parish. It took us 5 years to get ours published mainly because people didn’t tell us their opinions, wants and objections until we thought we were nearly finished. Editing and re editing takes time.

You are entitled to go to any of the meetings and have your say. Also talk to any of the committee members and/or the Parish Clerk. They won’t know you have issues unless you tell them.

There will be a first 6 week consultation period for parishioners, followed by another one with the District Council (or whichever Council runs your LPA). You can put your point of view during these periods. The plan will then go to an inspector after which it will go to referendum when you will get your chance to vote for or against the plan. HTH.

"I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest" Alexandre Dumas (fils)

Unfortunately I don't trust PC or the committee running it. In fact I wrote to PC Clerk and formally asked to be kept informed of any moves the PC might make regarding this land since as my water pipe, drains etc. were under this land I had a vested interest in the land. PC have never informed of the plan to make it a green space in the neighbourhood plan. No idea what utilities will say either as they all go under or over this verge.

What I have found it that my county council have a consult website (thanks for the LPA tip) which lists among others neighbourhood plans. There are some closed NPs with comments so I expect this plan to appear on this site during the consultation 6 weeks. I have registered for a login and they have an RSS feed so I've installed a feed reader and set that up to monitor the list.

And could you explain what you mean by protect the route? This land is basically a verge. To one side is carriageway, to the other side houses, at each end are house driveways. The utilities treat it as "street" and put their cables and pipes under it. Openreach a couple of years back came a replaced poles and in a different place to where they were before. I would have thought that having made a green space would restrict the utilities right to dig it up for pipes and plant poles in it (or cabinets, which they don't have but if we ever get higher speed fibre then cabinets will need to be nearer to houses). Otherwise what is the difference between that and verge?

A lot of people have claimed it is used but no, not really. There was one sad event a few years back where maybe a dozen people turned up (basically those not invited to private parties for this national event, me included as I was working on site so ended up being one of the sad few).

Green space designation does not stop utilities and such installing their stuff. It just gives them an extra thing to consider when siting above ground stuff. There is no reason why e.g. a new water pipe can not be laid astute land will be returned to its previous state. It's not as if the land becomes an SSI. Reasonable changes are allowed..

If it's just verge then highways via the council could sell it off if they wish. Getting green space designation makes this slot harder especially as they would've going against their own Neighbourhood Plan.

The land is waste land so highways act makes it verge. As it is waste I'm not sure that highways could sell it as they don't have a title to it. With the pipes under it and telephone cables over it who would want it anyway and would the utilities not object?

As for "operational land of the statutory undertakers" I've googled that but can't get my head around it. Next door was a one time a farm, it became registered land after 1962. I don't know when it connected to mains sewer which crosses this verge, but possibly this sewer connection only dates from the house, maybe this was just field during the farm time and the farmhouse somewhere different (the current building isn't an old one). I don't when the telephones were put in but that was over 30yrs ago. Current water and sewers are at least 30yrs too. I know one house dates from 1986 and the other house existed before 1982.

I would presume that green space would stop routing an access across the verge. Utilities could still mole but that would depend on how many trees were planted. Dense wood with overlapping RPAs could make that tricky surely. There are already 13 trees planted on this verge without a section 96 license. A lot of these trees are 5m or more tall and 5m spread.